Wednesday, 30 November 2011

Orb Factory Curiosity Kits Stick 'n Click Jewelry review

There was much excitement here at The Madhouse today because we received a product to review all the way from Canada (hence the American spelling of jewelry instead of jewellery in the review title !). We received a product from Orb Factory's Curiosity Kits range called Stick 'n Click Jewelry. 6-year-old Juliette immediately asked to be Chief Tester (and 10-year-old Sophie conceded gracefully when I offered her another product to review, but more about that later !). The suggested age on the box is 6-12 and it certainly appealed to both girls and Sophie actually had a sneaky play when her sister was off at a birthday party later in the afternoon ! With a bit of help, younger children could also use the kit with no problem, but you'd have to be careful they didn't put the small parts in their mouth as it could be a choking hazard.

The kit contains more than 300 pieces - several small sheets of glittery stickers which had the girls oohing and aahing, some small sparkly fake jewels and lots of plastic shapes and bendy plastic connectors that you can clip and unclip very easily.

I opened the instruction booklet and smiled as I read that there are no instructions ! You just have to let your imagination run wild and get as creative as you like ! The pieces allow you to make rings, bracelets and shoelace clips to jazz up your shoes, but Juliette also experimented with making a gridlike piece of sparkly wall art for her room. You could also make headbands and Sophie said she'd like to make a bookmark too.

I showed Juliette how to use the connectors to join the shapes together and she was off, clipping them together to make a bracelet within minutes. She had great fun choosing which stickers to use and matching the different forms to the different plastic shapes. The system was really easy for Juliette to pick up and the connectors work really well, being flexible enough to make comfortable jewellery and to be simple to snap on but without ever pinging off and springing apart.

It was great to see Juliette successfully creating beautiful jewellery totally unaided, which freed me up for doing other jobs around the house, and she was so excited and proud of her creations that she kept running up to show me.

There are plenty of spare connectors in the box so it won't matter if you lose a few. The plastic pieces can be unsnapped and rearranged as many times as you like, and as they are all interchangeable, you can swap over the pieces used on your rings, bracelets and lace clips to fit in with your clothes or mood.

Top marks from the Madhouse Mini Testers. I'll be keen to see if these kits are easy to buy in Europe because I'd love to check out the other products in the range. (I've just looked - this particular product isn't there yet but you can buy a selection of Orb Factory products on amazon UK.)

2 comments:

This looks lovely and the 6+ age range is probably about right. My daughter received an Orb factory set (not this one) for her Christmas and she is not quite 5 yet. She very quicky got bored with it so it's been put in the cupboard until she's a bit older.

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I'm mum to Sophie (born in 2001), Juliette (born in 2005) and Pierre (born in 2009). We're all French/English bilingual - even our two dogs Didou and Vicky ! If you have any comments or want me to review your products or host a giveaway, you can contact me at cherylpasquier2002@yahoo.fr .

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